John Henry Twachtman Biography

(b 1853 Cincinnati, Ohio; d 1902) One of the leading American Impressionist painters, Twachtman was born to German immigrant parents in America. He trained in Munich and later in Paris at the Académie Julian, where his classmates included fellow American artists and lifelong friends Frank W. Benson and Childe Hassam. Twachtman's primary subject was nature, particularly the natural or cultivated landscape. Through his art, Twachtman achieved a profound unity of subject and technique. He also established his most lasting legacy, a career that maintained both a mastery of nineteenth-century Impressionism, and a willingness to advance pure painting toward abstraction, hinting at developments to come in the twentieth century. Shortly after Twachtman's death in 1902, Thomas Wilmer Dewing remembered his friend by recognizing in his art "the most modern spirit...too modern, probably, to be recognized or appreciated at present; but his place will be recognized in the future." (credit: Christie’s catalogue of Important American Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, May 24, 2007, Lot 129)